NEWARK – Three years after Valley Lanes closed, two new businesses hope to strike it rich at the North 21st Street location.

Moo Moo Express Car Wash and Ohio Grown Therapies will split the site at 1246 N. 21st St., a popular spot for local bowlers from 1958 until 2015.

The car wash will occupy the northern half of the property, next to Speedway, with the design the same as its Heath location. The Newark car wash building will be a 3,600-square foot white barn. It will also have 36 vacuums, 12 more than the Heath location.

John Roush, of Granville, founder and managing partner of Moo Moo Car Wash, said there will be a contest to name the Newark car wash, following the tradition at all 13 central Ohio locations. The contest winner receives free car washes for a year. The Heath location has been named Bulldog. Reynoldsburg is The Broadfather. Upper Arlington is The Golden Moo.

Roush said it's satisfying to bring his business closer to his home. The Newark car wash should be open in December, he said. The Heath facility opened in 2016.

"I'm particularly proud of being in the area," Roush said. "Heath city was fantastic to work for, and Newark has been great. The site is going to be beautiful."

The Ohio Grown Therapies facility will be a medical marijuana dispensary opening in late 2018 or early 2019.

Andy Joseph, one of the investors in Ohio Grown Therapies, and CEO of Apeks Supercritical, a Johnstown manufacturer of equipment used in the medical marijuana industry, said he is excited about the Newark location.

"It’s obviously a piece of history for Newark," Joseph said. "It’s where the bowling alley was, for anybody that grew up in Newark. Unfortunately, they weren't able to save it, but they'll have two useful, functioning, job-creating entities.”

Joseph said the facility, which will have seven to 10 employees, will not have the appearance of a medical facility.

"It's not a doctor's office," Joseph said. "It's more of a spa. More inviting and warm, like a coffee shop or therapy area."

The site, which currently has two curb cuts, may have just one entrance/exit in the center, allowing customers to turn left for the car wash, and right for the dispensary. The businesses and the city continue to work on the site design.

Moo Moo Express Car Wash, which started with the Broad Street location in Reynoldsburg in 2009, has grown throughout central Ohio. Roush said customers tell him they didn't get their cars washed before Moo Moo opened, and now it's every week.

Roush was building commercial buildings before he took a leap of faith almost a decade ago.

“In 2009, I built three car washes, took a massive, crazy risk," Roush said. "Risked millions of dollars to build car washes in the middle of the Great Recession. It was crazy.”

In April, Moo Moo Express joined with Flying Ace Express Car Wash, of Dayton, under a new parent company, Express Wash Concepts. Roush is CEO of the parent company, which also includes Clean Express Auto Wash, of the Cleveland area.

"We're probably a top 20 car wash company in the United States," Roush said. The combined company has 180 employees and about 20 locations, he said.